


Compassion

by AuroraNova



Series: The Vadari Chronicles [3]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-29 22:58:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19029685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuroraNova/pseuds/AuroraNova
Summary: "I heard an interesting rumor today."Julian and Garak are surprisingly compatible roommates.





	Compassion

**Author's Note:**

> Here we go again. I'm not even going to bother saying I don't intend to write more in this series, because it doesn't appear to matter.

Julian finally thinks they’ve turned a corner with radiation exposure from Breen weapons. There will continue to be unavoidable long-term consequences, without question. For one thing, many here will never go outside without sunglasses again, because they will be sensitive to bright light for the rest of their lives. He has patients who were so close to the weapons fire they suffered irreversible thyroid damage which will require lifelong monitoring, and he’ll be surprised if the hospital doesn’t soon start to see numerous complaints of difficulty conceiving children.

It’s painful to see these permanent scars of war. Still, there is reason for hope. People’s hair is growing back, requests for antiemetics are down, and it’s been over a week since someone hurt themselves when they fainted.

Along the way, while he’s been healing others, some of Julian’s emotional wounds have begun to ache less. Not that he’s completely fine with the end of his Starfleet career. That will smart for some time, but he lost it for a good cause, and he’s still allowed to practice medicine.

He even has a new research project started, examining interspecies differences in the effect Breen weapons radiation has on mitochondrial replication. It could help with future treatment plans.

He won’t be nominated for a Carrington Award – no one is going to give it to an Augment – and he’s made his peace with that. Maybe the laws are phobic and unjust, but he knew them, and has been given far more latitude than he ever had a right to expect.

He survived the war, saved an entire race, and remains a doctor. It’s enough. It has to be.

When Julian gets home, Garak is watching a fashion update. He spent the first three months on Vadari VII working in the orchards, but his heart was never in it. He claims not to like trees as well as faster-growing plants. Julian thinks that might even be true. Regardless, there is some interest in clothes again, which is both a sign of recovery and good news for Garak, who’s opened a new shop.

The Vadari moons have no indigenous sentient life. Most of the population is human, but there is a significant minority of Ktarians, a contingent of unconventional Vulcans who choose to balance logic with (restrained) emotion, and a group of Betazoids. Garak is now attempting to carry and design clothing in a broad enough range to attract this diverse clientele.

It’s not what Garak wanted from his life, either. He has his own pain. Not that he talks about it, but Julian is well aware his friend obsessively reads any news to be had about Cardassia and is often melancholy afterwards.

To Garak’s credit, he hasn’t once said “I told you so” regarding the depressing reality of Julian’s interactions with Section 31 or the unjustness of it all.

“Home on time again? I’m beginning to think your assessment of the medical situation wasn’t simply optimism.”

“Good evening to you, too,” says Julian.

“I acquired makuteg steaks.”

Julian’s stomach rumbles. Garak arches one eyeridge in amusement.

Neither of them is a particularly gifted cook. With energy still being too tight for personal replication, they’ve made do, but Julian is looking forward to the convenience of replicated food. Besides, there’s only so long everyone can keep eating the moon’s seafood before ecological disaster strikes.

Makuteg isn’t seafood. The creatures look similar to Earth reindeer, if reindeer stood four meters tall and had pale pink fur. They are also delicious.

“I’ll start the kora,” Julian says. The Vulcan root vegetable grows prolifically on Vadari VII and thus its consumption has spread far beyond the small group of Vulcans on the colony.

“Have you heard that Teera Varon and Porwala Isu are to be married?”

“I have now.” Julian is not surprised in the least. The two are inseparable.

“I’m hoping they’ll consider me for their wedding attire.”

“Very funny, Garak.”

“I don’t see why my livelihood is a joking matter.”

“You really don’t know?” This has taken an amusing turn. “Everyone at a Betazoid wedding is nude.”

For a second, Garak lets Julian see his real discomfort, before he schools it into exaggerated horror. “Remind me never to accept an invitation to a Betazoid wedding.”

“I have a feeling you’re not going to need the reminder,” says Julian.

“What an incomprehensible people. No sense of propriety at all.”

Garak isn’t entirely comfortable with Betazoids, and that’s not primarily due to their au naturel weddings. Vulcans, at least, are touch telepaths and not difficult to avoid touching, since they prefer it. Betazoids make him nervous, though he naturally won’t admit so outright. It hasn’t escaped Julian’s notice that Garak subtly tries to avoid them when possible, except in business situations, because he needs the customers.

Sometimes, Julian thinks Garak wouldn’t have settled on Vadari VII of his own accord, if for no other reason than his (largely overblown) fears about telepaths rummaging around in his mind without permission. Since Julian is much happier having Garak around, he understands the impulse to want a friend. Even if Garak has never put the thought into words and probably never will.

“I heard an interesting rumor today,” Garak says while chopping cauliflower. He’s already lined up the army of spices he’ll cover it with before deeming it edible.

“Oh?” Julian replies. He seasons his own steak before Garak can attack it with Vulcan spices, a culinary experience he could’ve done without.  

“That you declined a single apartment.”

It’s true. Their small city finally received more prefab housing blocs, and Julian, as a doctor often on call, was near the top of the list for his own unit.

The thing was, he’d never asked to be on the list in the first place.

“And why would I do that?” he asks.

“That’s what the gossips wonder,” says Garak.

There still aren’t nearly enough apartments for everyone who’d like their own. Medical personnel, yes, but very few others, and there are a hundred and twelve more Ktarians due to arrive next week.

Julian could’ve had his own place. Garak would then be given a random roommate, and he’d be absolutely miserable. (So, for that matter, would the poor soul assigned to live with him.) He doesn’t trust easily and sleeping in the same room as someone requires a certain level of trust. Not to mention, few people would blithely agree to weekly security sweeps of their home, and Julian is better able to see in the lighting Garak finds comfortable than most. Ktarians love bright light.

All told, the fiasco of another roommate is not something Julian sees a need to inflict on his friend when he’s content with their current arrangement, so he turned down the offer to move.

Garak has figured out the obvious. “You didn’t have to decline on my behalf, Doctor.”

“I know,” says Julian.

“Nevertheless, it was extremely generous. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

Garak is once again uncomfortable. He never knows quite how to handle kindnesses shown to him, which Julian suspects speaks volumes about his childhood.

“I didn’t mention it because it’s not a big deal,” Julian adds, though why he feels the need to explain himself to a man who never returns the favor, he doesn’t know.

“I disagree, and not only because the neighbors’ leading theory is that we’re having a torrid affair.”

Julian abandons the cucumber he’d been about to slice. “I’m sorry if that perception bothers you,” he says carefully.

“I’ve been accused of many things in my life, and few of them less troubling. I simply thought you ought to be aware.”

Ah. Garak doesn’t mind (or if he does, he still finds the rumor far less bothersome than getting another roommate), but he thinks Julian might object. Julian shrugs. He’s not concerned with what other people think of him. “I’ll make sure to correct the assumption if I find anyone I’d like to ask out.”

His priorities are elsewhere at the moment, though he imagines that will change eventually. Right now, it’s enough to be making a difference, meeting new people who might become friends, and of course have one old friend with questionable literary preferences in his life.

Garak gives him a warm smile, and they don’t speak of the subject anymore.

A few days later, Garak presents Julian with a new shirt, and they both know the time and effort he put into it reflect his sincere gratitude.


End file.
